November 8, 2007

"Do they want to keep trading the presidency between these two weird families?"Joe Klein has some questions (in a big, rambling Time piece):

"Who knows?" said Karl Rhomberg, a former Scott County Democratic chairman, after watching Clinton perform in Davenport, Iowa. He pointed out that four years ago, in November, Howard Dean was inevitable, and John Kerry was over. "But 40% were undecided going into the last week of the caucus. It'll be the same this time. Hillary is 20% smarter than the guys, but a woman has to be just to pull equal. And I can't stand thinking about what Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are going to do to her. People are just sick of that. They love Obama. He's very inspiring. But in the end, Iowans vote on electability. I hate to say it, but my guess is they'll vote for the white guy — Edwards — this time, just like they voted for the war hero last time."

It was a chilling thought. I'm sure Edwards wouldn't want to win that way, and I'm not so sure he will. But Rhomberg's scenario wasn't at all implausible. It certainly raises the central issue of this Democratic campaign: whether Hillary Clinton's excellence as a candidate will be enough to overcome her family's garish political history, the undiluted hatred that will be directed against her and the demons that still haunt our nation.

Oh, that drooling over Clinton is a little repulsive. Excellence. 20% smarter. Ugh! But what's worse is pushing the offensive notion that if we don't like her, we're sexist. It's hatred. Demons! Haunting our nation!

Edwards wouldn't want to win that way. Please. First of all, Edwards wants to win any way he can. He'll even claim to be more womanly than Hillary if he thinks we want a woman.

But we've all been thinking about 2004 and Howard Dean in connection with Hillary's current seeming inevitability, haven't we? Can't you picture the scenario playing out the same way in '08? Scream and all.

67 comments:

But we've all been thinking about 2004 and Howard Dean in connection with Hillary's current seeming inevitability, haven't we? Can't you picture the scenario playing out the same way in '08? Scream and all.

Scream no, cackle is more likely.

(I don't see Hillary screaming)

Any odd verbal utterance emitting from the throat of Sen. Clinton, regardless of what it sounds like, would probably be tagged as being a "cackle".

I think America is ready for a woman president or a black president. I think they're not ready to elect someone just for those things.

I got to wondering this past week how a Feinstein candidacy would look. She's a popular senator from the most populated state. She's willing to set aside partisanship for a higher cause (see the Mukasey vote this past week) even as she's very much a Democrat. She's not abrasive but she is, it seems, strong.

She seems, in my opinion, a lot more presidential than Hillary. Wondering if she's thought about running.

"Do they want to keep trading the presidency between these two weird families?"

Unfortunately, I can't vouch for "they" (but I suspect that's how it's going to turn out).

As for me, NO NO NO NO NO NO!

Should Sen. Clinton ascend to the presidency, which I think is likely enough, and manage to serve two terms, she would leave office in January of 2017, at which point I will be just six weeks shy of 56.

Which means I will have spent essentially spent half of my life under the rule of a Bush or a Clinton.

The very thought makes me gag, as does dynastic rule in general.

(Incidentally, both Chelsea Clinton and some members of Bush: The Next Generation, will be old enough to run for president in 2016, if barely. Let The River Run! Bwahahahaha!!)

Yeh, by the time that Hillary leaves office in 2017, there should be another George Bush ready to take the reins. Much better looking than Chelsea, plus being (half) Hispanic. I remember back in maybe 2000 when he was #3 or so in People's Elgible Bachelors. Then, maybe Chelsea will have her turn. If everyone gets their full eight years, that would result in one of the two families reigning for 44 years. Straight.

I don't know why anyone assumes that Hillary is the smartest candidate running. If one were naive enough to assume that Ivy League grad school is indication of top brains, both Obama and Romney have top tier JDs, and the later also has a Harvard MBA, plus, of course, making oodles of money with his brains and management ability.

I might be convinced that Hillary's husband is one of the smartest men to ever have occupied the Oval Office, but I have a hard time believing that she has as much mental horsepower as he does, and, indeed, have seen nothing to make me believe that she is any smarter than many of the other top candidates running this time around on either side.

This condition is aggravated by the realization that, depending on who goes up on the other side, I may have to choose between voting for Hillary anyway, despite my dislike and disapproval of dynasties in American politics, or--ANATHEMA! BLASPHEMY!--not vote for a candidate for the presidency at all.

There's a huge difference between Dean in 2003 and Hillary in 2007: Dean was mostly an unknown at the time, and people could project onto him whatever image they wished. Hillary has been on the national stage now for over 15 years, and her image is set with supporters and foes alike.

Who is this "we"? You and Christopher? By the way, I thought you wanted an Al Gore draft in the Dem convention next summer. That's something to really support, so stick with it, don't go all wussy now.

Ann: As long as you can pose the question "do people want a woman president", you give complete validity to anyone who would vote for or against anyone because of their gender (or race). Identity politics reigns.

I respect Edwards personally. He has been through a lot with his wife''s illness and burying a child. And despite all teh jokes about his house, he is at easy with his background (most yuppies seem embarrassed by their parents or grandparents).

Reader_iam, I am disappointed in you. How can you lack the necessary imagination and tolerance to stand in the way of love? Amore is a strange and wonderful thing. No one can explain it. No one can stand in its way. The joining of the house of Montague and Capulet would be a grand and wondrous thing. It could bring peace to our bitterly divided land. Let the bells ring and let our diffences fly away on the wings of love.

I'm fine with a woman President. Just not THAT woman as president. Looking back it took a couple of years before CDS and BDS infected the nation. Somehow I suspect Hillary as President means a serious case of CDS from day one. The dynasty issue is the canary in the mine for me as to how corrupt the parties are now at national level.

But Reader_iam, that is just the point. Imagine the commingled clans at a summer barbeque at Kennebunkport. Poppy Bush sleeping in a hammock in the sun. Hillary and Laura fussing over the grandchildren and reading them stories. Granduncle W teaching his grand nephews how to hit a golf ball and fish for the elusive striper. Grandpa Bill fishing for the elusive stripper. Well most of it will be pretty good.

And wasn't there some story recently that Bush has been secretly advising Clinton? I think W would much prefer her to any of the Reeps:

1) He's confident she's not going to screw up Iraq (from his p.o.v.)

2) He figures she'll make him look good in retrospect. (That might be a fantasy, but I'm trying to look at this from Bush's perspective.)

3) She won't be afraid to consult with him publicly, something you cannot imagine Obama or Guiliani doing.

4) Bill's nice to his Dad.

There is no Bush "heir" among the current GOP crop. Every one of them would come in and show him up on the domestic side. So would Hillary, but at least Bush could say, "she's doin' the liberal stuff I wouldn't do."

Oh well, I see Trooper York, already made the connection. All we need now is the prologue:

Two households, both alike in dignity,In fair [Washington, DC], where we lay our scene,From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.From forth the fatal loins of these two foesA pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;Whole misadventured piteous overthrowsDo with their death bury their parents' strife.The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,And the continuance of their parents' rage,Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;The which if you with patient ears attend,What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

She seems, in my opinion, a lot more presidential than Hillary. Wondering if she's thought about running.

There are two big reasons why she will never be President:

(1): She'll be 75 next year and 79 in 2012. That's too old.

(2): She's a California Democrat.

Yes, she'll carry the state, but almost ANY Democrat will carry this state. It doesn't matter if she's popular here or not, so far as Presidential elections are concerned. She needs to be popular in states that don't normally go to the Democrats, and she isn't. If she were a popular California *Republican* or a popular Democrat from, say, Texas, that would be something -- that would put a major state in play, and make her a very tempting candidate.

Revenant, having said that any Democrat will carry California, do you think that Giuliani puts California in play in 2008? Not even necessarily to the point of carrying it, but even to the point where he poses a serious enough threat to force a democratic candidate to spend time and money there that wouldn't be tied up by another GOP candidate?

On topics like this, Joe Klein is always tiresome and preachy. He can't understand how any person of good will can disagree with his political values. If you do, then you must be a racist, sexist or worse (I'm not sure there is worse in his world, but who knows for sure). His virtue is that he is completely up front with his down-the-line partisan perspective -- you know what you're going to get from him and are never disappointed. Sort of an Olbermann without all the frothing.

This sort of thing is likely to keep reappearing in Time (and elsewhere), posing as insightful political commentary, as the primaries move into high gear. It's another good reason not to waste time or trees reading Time or Newsweek, among other useless publications.

More to the point, do we (including women) want women anywhere other than at home with -and raising- their own children whom they have borne in their own wombs ?Who is going to pay for the retire- ment pensions of all the baby- boomers ? Young workers -far less numerous than in 1960s- are already highly taxed. Our politicians are afraid to touch Social Security because they'll not be re-elected.Public pension plans nation-wide are near bankrupt -and private pensions may be worse off. The die has been cast and the fight is upon us : Inter-generational warfare between all the aging baby-boomers who supported feminist nonsense and young -already excessively taxed- workers. Who do you think will win ? I very much doubt we old-timers will.And why has this occured/is this occuring ? It is one of the innumerable horrors wrought by feminism, a feminism which said that men and women are equal (such a dastardly lie), that women should work instead of having children, that abortion was a woman's "right" and so much other contemptible nonsense that I couldn't even list here; because life itself has been attacked by a feminism that only embraces death. And that is what Hillary Clinton and her equally foolish husband (whose cockmanship I highly esteem; as Hillary couldn't satisfy him, he found it necessary to get tit elsewhere -so even Hillary has been victimised by feminism) will bring to America and the world if she gets elected.As to Maxine Weiss, thank-you. And I note that the female genius, once a woman agrees with a man, is to do a him better.

"Revenant, having said that any Democrat will carry California, do you think that Giuliani puts California in play in 2008?"

Well, Hillary might actually have to spend some money here, but I don't think he's a serious threat in California. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, though -- there, he's a threat.

I wouldn't say Giuliani OR Hillary!are inevitable. Hillary has to show she can take the hits and also establish that she was as "hooked in" to executive decision-making in the Ark governorship and the WH as she suggests- the burden is on her for furninshing evidence of her "hands-on, but behind the scenes, leadership".

As for Rudy, Kerik just got indicted and that is just the tip of the dirt-berg that is Rudy and his associates..And Romney leads in Nevada, Wyoming, Michigan, has pulled even in South Carolina, widened his lead in Iowa to 16 and New Hampshire to 15.

It is NOT about national polls. It is about accumulating state delegates, state by state, and also about the Party looking and seeing who is the most viable in the most states with the most electoral votes.

*****************Hayden - I concur about Hillary's intelligence, while far higher than the average American, puts her in the middle of the pack. And I agree about Bill C having the most raw brainpower of any modern President. One notch above Nixon, though Nixon, by hard work - knew more. Romney might give Bill a run for his money. The guy who never studied at Yale Law vs the Ned Flanders guy who finished top 5% in Harvard Law and MBA school and who his profs said was unlimited in potential.

For Hoover, his reputation for genius lies in engineering, orchestrating the establishing of the structure where the US regulated and promoted the technologies exploding in the 20s -giving us global leadership, his logistics and organizational genius. Not for his Presidency, alas.

Bush won't crack the top half, but can take solace that scholars believe he was smarter than GOre or Kerry, based on SATs and school performance.

Most historians agree that the President with the best teeth was Jimmy Carter. That seems to be the only category in which he is the undisputed leader, except perhaps for hatred of the Jews where he is only surpassed by Adolf Eichmann, Reinhard Heinrich, Henry Ford and Cedarford in all of recorded human history.

Most historians agree that George Washington had the worst teeth of any president. Of course the standards of dental hygiene were quite different in the 1700’s so we can not really judge. Although the General and Martha did not have any children, they had a very happy marriage. It is reputed that the lack of teeth led the father of our country to become very talented in oral manipulation and that he could correct the fit of his powdered wig with his tongue. It is quite possible if he ran today and did that trick in a debate, he would garner more votes than Bill Clinton, JFK and FDR combined.

Ann: As long as you can pose the question "do people want a woman president", you give complete validity to anyone who would vote for or against anyone because of their gender (or race). Identity politics reigns.

Many historians have noted that the official portrait of James Buchanan did not display his true countenance. It seems that he had a substantial gap in his front teeth that was never portrayed in any of his portraits. This was no impediment to his election and indeed made him very popular with the foreign sailors who resided in the Willard Hotel.

I am absolutely, 100% ready to have a woman as President, especially if she's qualified by having national-level legislative and executive experience. It's even okay if her husband was a major political figure and will drag in baggage from the 1990s.

Below you'll find what I posted above at about #40. The reason I post it again (about #60) is to illustrate how bad off we as a country -a world- are. Feminism has destroyed any backbone in men whatsoever. No one has commented on the fact that I have posited the near complete revision of civil rights in the USA -and the world. Because feminism has made pansies, wimps,faggots and worse out of all men in our once great country. Yesterday I met a Sunni iman from Lahore,Pakistan in Yonkers who could probably beat any one of you supposed American men either intellectually or physically because of his determination. As I see it -because of feminism- no man in America today has any idea what being a man means. And I call all you "men" perverts, faggots, queers, ass- wipers and worse. America's men today are worse than cursed women/feminists because they are to lazy even to wipe their own asses.POSTED EARLIER: More to the point, do we (including women) want women anywhere other than at home with -and raising- their own children whom they have borne in their own wombs ? Who is going to pay for the retire- ment pensions of all the baby- boomers ? Young workers -far less numerous than in 1960s- are already highly taxed. Our politicians are afraid to touch Social Security because they'll not be re-elected. Public pension plans nation-wide are near bankrupt -and private pensions may be worse off. The die has been cast and the fight is upon us : Inter-generational warfare between all the aging baby-boomers who supported feminist nonsense and young -already excessively taxed- workers. Who do you think will win ? I very much doubt we old-timers will. And why has this occured/is this occuring ? It is one of the innumerable horrors wrought by feminism, a feminism which said that men and women are equal (such a dastardly lie), that women should work instead of having children, that abortion was a woman's "right" and so much other contemptible nonsense that I couldn't even list here; because life itself has been attacked by a feminism that only embraces death. And that is what Hillary Clinton and her equally foolish husband (whose cockmanship I highly esteem; as Hillary couldn't satisfy him, he found it necessary to get tit elsewhere -so even Hillary has been victimised by feminism) will bring to America and the world if she gets elected. As to Maxine Weiss, thank-you. And I note that the female genius, once a woman agrees with a man, is to do a him better.

When Federico Fellini was directing some of the seminal works of our modern cinema, he was often driven to distraction with his actors. He often utilized non-professional or citizens in his movies. However the improvised dialogue and behaviors would go into strange and bizarre tangents as their personal psychosis would become manifest. As he continued his sojourn into documenting the weird and grotesque, this behavior became more and more troubling. Finally all he could do was to throw up his hands and cry to the heavens "Jesu Cristo" and end his dabbling in the bizarre world of freaks and demons. He had a contract to direct Smokey and the Bandit IV before his untimely demise in October of 1993. (Federico Fellini, The E True Hollywood Story)

I am a Roman Catholic and I go to mass every Sunday/Saturday night. But I was also trained by the Jesuits, the Jews, U.S. Intelligence agencies... And I revere all of the above. You, Ann and your fellow feminists are going down, all the way down.

"As usual, Ann hits it 100%. Nobody won't vote for Hillary because she's a woman -- they will only not vote for her for totally rational reasons, like she's a bitch. No sexism here, no sirree bob..."

Wow Christopher. Decided to run with that idiotic comment in this thread also huh. I see you left out your estimate of 10%-15% of those who wont vote for her due to those reasons. Your perfectly happy lumping the other 85%-90% in there so you can make your stupid point. Learning a lot about intellectual honesty from Lucky, I see.

Reader: I'm older than you, so I will only have to spend a little more than 2/5 of my life under our sad excuse for Bourbons and Hapsburgs.

American politics are starting to give me a warm, glowy feeling about hereditary monarchy. But who wants the Bushes and Clintons for royals? Where's Louis XIV when we need him?

Sadly, for every Louis XIV, there seems to have been a Charles X, so I suppose it's all the same in the end: We set bozos up to be ringmasters, and are disappointed when they turn out to be clowns. In a democracy, we tell them to hand in the wig, the funny shoes and the big red nose and go find another circus. It's been less amusing to replace, say, the Flying Hapsburgs when the act's gone stale.

Some people fear Mrs. Clinton aspires to something more than the presidency of a republic. We'll know for certain when they start construction of a temple instead of a Presidential library.

My own objections to Mrs. Clinton have to do with her health care proposals being too conventional, and the opinion some of her supporters have of her. She has become Cybele, Athena, Minerva and Freyja rolled into one. You can throw in Nixon if you like.

To others of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, she is Lilith, Hecate, and the Queen of the Night rolled into one. You can throw in Nixon if you like.

And for those who don't mind the Queen of the Night, here's a lovely image of her as the Eternal Feminine, overlooking her peaceable realm, but with a sword in hand, ready to defend it. This may be the most hopeful view of Mrs. Clinton, the first serious woman candidate and our first Inevitable President of the United States.